Island of Lost Girls
Jennifer McMahon, 2008
HarperCollins
272 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780061445880
Summary
One summer day, at a gas station in a small Vermont town, six-year-old Ernestine Florucci is abducted by a person wearing a rabbit suit while her mother is buying lottery tickets. Twenty-three year old Rhonda Farr is the only witness, and she does nothing as she watches the scene unfold—little Ernie goes with the rabbit so casually, confidently getting into the rabbit’s Volkswagen bug, smiling while the rabbit carefully fastens her seatbelt.
The police are skeptical of Rhonda’s story and Ernie’s mother blames her outright. The kidnapping forces Rhonda to face another disappearance, that of her best friend from childhood—Lizzy Shale, whose brother, Peter just so happens to be a prime suspect in Ernie’s abduction.
Unraveling the present mystery plunges Rhonda headlong down the rabbit hole of her past. She must struggle to makes sense of the loss of the two girls, and to ask herself if the Peter she grew up with—and has secretly loved all her life—could have a much darker side. (From the publisher.)